It turns out Charlie Manuel would have liked Cliff Lee to stay in Philadelphia. Just like in the case of his wife’s decision to buy expensive furniture, however, Charlie was powerless to stop the front office from shitting its pants. This isn’t exactly a shocking revelation but the fact that he said so publicly is a refreshing piece of honesty, regardless of how obvious that honesty is. It’s like the opposite of the lying nonsense put forth by Manuel’s boss, Ruben Amaro, on the matter. Yes, Ruben, we believe you that given the choice between “replenishing the farm system” and having the N.L.’s best rotation headlined by 2 Yankee killers, the former was a hotter priority. Or that the $9 million they saved by letting Lee go is being put to better use in the form of Shane Victorino and Joe Blanton.

Sure, the manager always wants to keep the star player because that makes his job easier. Charlie doesn’t have to worry about contracts or free agents; he just needs to fill out the lineup card and pat his guys on their butts (and even a circus clown knows that Cliff Lee’s services should have been retained). I would have liked Lee to be back but oh well, I guess I’ll have to settle for Jose Contreras.

I’m sitting here listening to Anthony Gargano on WIP with his marbles-in-the-mouth, over-affected South Philly accent blabber on-an-on about how wonderful last night’s game was. And it was. But it’s over and the series isn’t yet decided. With that said last night’s game gave us a glance at why confidence in this team is never in short supply and why the Phillies can never be counted out.

At the same time I’m curious to know how much confidence people have in Cole Hamels’ ability to close it out tomorrow night. He’s been the one player this postseason that fans have had a lukewarm relationship with. Why? Because he’s aloof, simply put. The quality that became apparent in Colorado in the Phillies comeback and again last night is something that Hamels doesn’t seem to have. He seems uninterested and at times even surly.

His numbers in his first two playoff starts aren’t great. He gave up 7 hits and 4 earned runs in his Game 2 start against the Rockies in 5 innings pitched. And then in Game 1 against the Dodgers he surrendered 8 hits and 4 earned runs in 5.1 innings. Hamels also infamously glared at Chase Utley after the second baseman’s throwing error led to the Manny Ramirez home run blast in Game 1. The Phillies managed to win that game but not because of Hamels. They won because they hung around and out-gritted the Dodgers.

It’s going to take a Herculean effort for the Dodgers to come back on the Phillies in this series so looking ahead, the Phillies are going to need to be close to perfect if they’re going to beat the Yankees. They haven’t faced a lineup as top-to-bottom powerful as New York’s and if they’re going to best baseball’s biggest franchise, it’s going to take great pitching. Right now the one area of concern for this team is what Hamels will bring to the mound. Following that logic we’ll need to see a little more from Cole Hamels if this team is going to reach its ultimate and historic goal.

Cliff Lee is now the Phillies ace. The 2008 Cy Young winner in the American League will be now be pitching to only 8 hitters per game. In addition to Lee, the Phils get right-handed bat, Ben Francisco. This trade killed two birds with one stone and cost the Phillies exactly nothing. They traded away Carlos Carrasco, Single-A pitcher Jason Knapp, catcher Lou Marson and shortstop Jason Donald. Lou Marson is the only one of the bunch with Major League experience, having played in 8 games for the Phillies over the past two seasons.

Lee is a stud and one of the top-5 lefties in baseball. This is a great trade for the Phillies as they didn’t have to part ways with Michael Taylor, Dominic Brown, J.A. Happ of Kyle Drabek. Kind of makes you nervous that Roy Halladay is still out there, just waiting to get snatched-up by the Red Sox, Angels, Yankees or Dodgers. Or is he?

The fact that Ruben Amaro got a Cy Young winner without having to give up any of his top-3 minor league guys or Happ has to make you wonder whether the Halladay trade is still in the works for the Phillies. This may sound crazy, but the same deal that J.P. Ricciardi and the Jays rejected earlier in the week is still intact. Let me repeat that: the Phillies just got Cliff Lee for nothing and can still take on Roy Halladay.

Maybe I’m thinking like someone who lives in New York or Boston, but if they did do that (if for no other reason than to block Halladay’s trade to a rival), your playoff rotation would be Halladay, Lee and Hamels (in no particular order) and Joe Blanton. For as great as the Lee acquisition is, think about how a Beckett-Halladay-Lester top 3 would be. Or a Sabathia-Halladay-Burnett trio. What about Halladay-Carpenter-Wainwright?

The reality is that some team the Phils will most-likely face in the post season will have Roy Halladay on it. When you add that to the fact the Ruben Amaro is still holding all his high cards, it’s not unreasonable to imagine the Phils’ front office still having some designs on Roy Halladay.

ADDENDUM: Call me a dreamer for making this case, but I’m not the only one: Cito Gaston thinks the Halladay-to-Philly trade is still a possibility.

Take a quick look at Sam Donnellon’s article in today’s Daily News and you’ll see three things: an unpaid marketer for the Phillies, someone with an unrealistic grip on the way baseball works and an unabashed homer. The article is headlined “Believe it or Not, Phillies Doing Fine.” That would be like saying “Believe it or Not, Richard Simmons Not Gay.”

The article is predicated on the idea that the Phillies weren’t much better at the same point last year (though, as Donnellon himself notes, they had 5 more wins) and that injuries and sub-par starting pitching plagued them through the middle of last season as well. All that is true, the problem is that people believe that because the Phillies won it all last year that they have a team built to contend this year and the reality of the first half of the season tells us they don’t.

To fans, remembering epic late season runs evokes the hope that these things can be repeated. In reality, there are countless examples of teams that got hot at the right time (did anyone seriously believe the same thing about last year’s Colorado Rockies?), made deep playoff runs or won it all and weren’t so hot the next year. The reason is because very few teams in any sport are actually built so solidly as to be likely to repeat as champions.

Be honest with yourself: do you really believe that Cole Hamels, Brett Myers, Joe Blanton and Jamie Moyer are a multi-year playoff-caliber pitching rotation? Last year, everyone pitched well at the right times, Brad Lidge was perfect and the Phillies drew 3 playoff opponents that weren’t exactly the ‘98 Yankees. That being said, they won the games and won the Series and that’s nothing short of terrific.

But looking at the composition of this team (in particular the pitching), how can anyone seriously expect them to repeat? How can we sit here and act like we’re being deprived of the perfomance of masters who are simply having a half-season slump? Sure, they have time to right the ship (after all, they play in an awful division and are still in first) and the possibility is there for them to content for the pennant. But the question is should we believe they will and so far the overwhelming evidence points in the other direction.

This isn’t a team with Jon Lester and Josh Beckett or Cain and Lincecum or Wainwright and Carpenter or even Lowe and Jurrjens. And to this point, it’s not a team with Zach Greinke, Cliff Lee, Dan Haren or Roy Halladay. This is a team whose theoretical best pitcher is Cole Hamels (4-5, 4.98). In actuality, their best pitcher is J.A. Happ (5-0, 3.00) who will try to prevent a 3-game sweep at the hands of the 4th-place Atlanta Braves tonight.

Listen, I’m not trying to be a debbie downer but the idea that this team deserves to or is inherently built to bounce right back is ludicrous. Rather, this is a team whose weaknesses are being exposed and despite the fact they’re better than their month of June has indicated, it’s not the Phillies’ birthright (because of what happened last October) to win it all again. So please stop telling us it is.

• I’d like to take a few moments and speculate/percolate in the wonderment of the Donovan McNabb salary story.
• The Phillies beat the Red Sox yesterday and to hear it from fans, they just won the World Series again. A gentle reminder to Phillies Nation: you’re the champs now; let them get up for you, not the other way around.
• Despite the win yesterday, the Phillies lost the series and have yet to win a home series against anyone not named the Nationals. They are now 13-16 at home and if you subtract the 6 games they’ve played at home against the Nats they are 8-15 at home.
• The Phillies smoked Josh Beckett yesterday. He wasn’t the only superstar pitcher to get roughed up in a NL East game yesterday. Johan Santana had the worst start of his career, throwing 82 pitches in 3 innings and surrendering 9 hits and 9 earned runs in a 15-0 loss to the New York Stinkies. And in Atlanta, Derek Lowe gave up 7 runs on 8 hits, throwing a whopping 80 pitches in 2.1 innings.
• Chase Utley is the overall leader in vote-getting for the NL All Star Team. Raul Ibanez leads among outfielders. A Phillie is in the top-4 in votes at every position on the diamond.

New York Mets closer, Francisco Rodriguez, is an idiot. I say that primarily because of the puerile, self-congratulatory dance he does upon completing saves. I say that also because he wears color contacts and on account of the fact he’s a Met (therefore a choke artist and perennial loser).

Thankfully, someone out there isn’t happy with his victory dance either. Yankees’ pitcher, Brian Brunley, made a point of telling the media that K-Rod is a “tired act.” Rodriguez responded by saying Brunley “better keep his mouth shut” and yesterday they almost came to blows during batting practice.

Of Luis Castillo’s horribly amateurish drop of what what would have been the final out in Friday’s game against the Yankees, Brunley said “it couldn’t have happened to a better guy on the mound, either. He’s a tired act.” K-Rod’s need to draw attention to himself by dancing and shouting upon completing the Herculean task of getting three batters out is tiresome. It’s also childish and primitive. As Phillies fans, it makes us proud to have a class act like Brad Lidge as our late-inning hero (we still buy that, right?), not this dancing caveman.

More great East Coast baseball this weekend as the Mets and Yankees square off in the Bronx and the Red Sox visit Philly for 3. These matchups are what make Interleague play so much fun for the fans. With apologies to the old, crusty baseball writers and self-appointed “purists,” Interleague play is great because fans have fun seeing matchups that would otherwise only be possible by a stroke of World Series luck.

I was listening to a conversation just now about how the Red Sox and Phillies match up, position-by-position (forgetting pitching). Anthony Gargano said that he’d take every member of the Phillies’ infield over the Red Sox (Feliz and Lowell were a push). What do you think? Ibanez, Victorino and Werth in the outfield against Bay, Ellsbury and Drew?

Of the starting players, there are only 2 positions where I think one team has the definitive edge. The first would be shortstop where (despite his slow start) the Phillies have an MVP and absolute defensive stud in Jimmy Rollins. I’d take him any day over the platoon of Nick Green, Jed Lowrie and Julio Lugo. The other position I think is clear-cut is right field: Jayson Werth is yet to establish himself with an outstanding season and despite a slightly-sub par year so far, Drew’s numbers are better in every statistical category both this season and for his career.

It’s an interesting conversation especially when you consider the 2nd base pairing: along with Ian Kinsler in Texas, Dustin Pedroia and Chase Utley are the two best at that position in baseball. What about first base? Would you rather have Ryan Howard, a home run machine who’s going to give you almost 200 SOs, a fair average and an increasingly good defensive presence or Kevin Youkilis, who’s hitting .350 with a 1.104 OPS, a gold glove and a projected 32 HRs this year?

What do you think?

Tonight is a great baseball night. The two best rivalries in East Coast baseball are in full swing as the Yankees look for their first win against Boston this year (their 7th try) and the Phillies are in New York to take on Jeans Shorts Nation. The Phillies-Mets rivarly has come into its own in the past 3 seasons as both teams have been competitive simultaneously, one of the things that adds luster to any rivalry. Like the Yankees and Red Sox who seem even favorites to vie for the AL East each season, the appeal of the Mets-Phils rivalry just keeps getting better as they’ve been (arguably) the best two teams in the NL for the past few years. And with the Phillies World Championship won, both these rivalries as well as all 4 teams individually have put East Coast baseball back where it should be, at the top.

The only thing I’d like to see more of in the Phillies vs. Mets rivalry is nastiness. Boston and New York have a longer history of mutual hatred and even in recent years have produceed more fireworks. To name a few, you’ve got Pedro dropping octogenarian, Don Zimmer (above) and Jason Varitek KOing A-Rod. Sure, Jimmy Rollins and K-Rod have talked smack before the season but where are the beanballs and the brawls? Say what you want about the Sox-Yanks being overhyped but there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind those two teams genuinely hate each other. I’d like to see a little more of that from the players when the Mets and Phillies collide.

Interleague play begins today and two of the best matchups in baseball kick-off tonight. In an East-to-East setup, the Mets and Red Sox are in Boston for a weekend series and the first-place Phillies will play the first of a three game set at Yankee Stadium tonight. Brett Myers will be on the mound against A. J. Burnett.

Baseball Tonight has a quick preview of the matchup from a pitching perspective. One interesting stat that’s mentioned is for all the concern about a left handed heavy lineup (especially now that Utley, Howard and Ibanez look like murderer’s row), the Phillies are 9-3 against left handed starters. That’s a good thing because J. A. Happ will face Andy Pettitte tomorrow and Hamels will face Sabathia on Sunday.

As an aside, I’m setting the over/under on home runs in the series at 11.5.

The image above is the logo for the 1944-45 Philadelphia Blue Jays baseball club. I found it on a most peculiar site, entitled “Tom MacMahon: The Strategy of Bingo. The Excitement of Chess.” Anyway, 3 Phillies questions I don’t have the answer to. Perhaps you do.

1. How much longer while grandfather-status protect Jamie Moyer’s roster spot? Seriously.
2. Whom will the Phillies DH this weekend when they play the Yankees (they’ll be facing at least two lefties in Sabathia and Pettitte)? Their bench hasn’t exactly, um, been good.
3. Where will Chan Ho Park fit into the Phillies’ bullpen? This question becomes even more interesting when you consider J. C. Romero’s impending return.